


A Difficult Birth

by catwalksalone



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Bullying, Canon Domestic Abuse, Elementary School, Family Drama, Gen, Origin Story, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 03:13:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6035749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catwalksalone/pseuds/catwalksalone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“How come we don’t see Jimmy ‘round here no more?” his mom asked.</em>
</p>
<p>The origin story of Leonard Snart, age 9.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Difficult Birth

**Author's Note:**

> Rating for language and canon levels of domestic abuse. Please be aware.
> 
> Many thanks to soupytwist for giving it her usual eagle-eyed once over.

It started in third grade when a new kid showed up at school and suddenly Jimmy Turner wasn't his best friend any more. At recess he watched them run across the yard, coats tied around their shoulders flying out behind them. He didn’t need to hear them to know what they were playing: new kid got to be the superhero now. He gripped one forearm with his hand and squeezed. When it hurt on the outside it hurt less on the inside. 

He thought maybe the new friend shine would wear off, but it didn’t. 

“How come we don’t see Jimmy ‘round here no more?” his mom asked.

Leo shrugged. “Busy, I guess.”

Mom ruffled his hair and put a plate in front of him. It rattled to a standstill on the clean, Formica surface, the bread of his PB and J sandwich curled at the edges. “You boys didn’t fall out, did you?”

“I didn’t do nothing,” Leo said, because he hadn’t. He was still exactly the same.

Jimmy wasn’t, though. Jimmy sneered where he used to smile. Jimmy whispered in new kid’s ear when he knew Leo was looking. New kid sneered too. He was taller than Jimmy, broader too, a linebacker in waiting. 

Leo tried to ignore it, and it worked for a time, but then the whispering started up in earnest. “Don’t sit with Leo, his poppa’s in _prison_.” “Don’t touch Leo, he's got cooties from _criminals_.”

Leo squeezed his arm harder and broke the point of his pencil on his paper. He got up to sharpen it and heard the scrape of chairs moving away from him as he passed. His throat ached. 

Jimmy was the only one who knew. Jimmy had told. In that moment, Leo realized that he’d gone forever. That there was no ending where they were the ones in the parka capes and new kid was sitting on the school steps alone. He wanted to go home more than he’d ever wanted anything. He wanted to climb into his mom’s lap and have her tell him her stories of what they would do when they struck it rich. He wanted to hear her say, “Know what, baby, I got an overtime bump in my paycheck, it’s ice cream city in here tonight!” His legs, heavy and dull, only carried him as far as his desk. 

The teacher was grading their homework: stories about adventures in space. She sighed and shook her head a whole lot. Grandpa had taken Leo to see _Star Wars_ the day it came out and he was counting down the days to the sequel. One day he’d hop a starship right out of his life like Luke, he just _knew_ it. The assignment had been the easiest yet. He hoped Miss Nguyen liked it. She was smiling now. She raised her head and looked straight at Leo.

“Did you write this all by yourself?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Well, aren’t you just the smart one? What a fantastic story, Leo.”

Leo didn’t even get enough time to straighten with pride before Jimmy, sitting in back of him, leaned forward and whispered, “ _…Nard_ ,” at him, the malice in his voice impossible to mistake. 

Leo froze, staring at the teacher. She gave no signs of having heard anything, but surely she had to?

“Do you mind if I read it out to the class?” she asked.

Leo minded. He minded a whole lot, but it wasn’t like he could tell her no. He nodded, just once. 

“Thank you, Leo,” she said.

“ _Nard_ ,” came the voice again, this time with a rippling titter from the cluster of kids close enough to hear.

Leo didn’t hear what the teacher said after that. First his father, now his own name used against him. He felt sick. He gripped his forearm again, digging the nails in as hard as he could. 

“It’ll pass, honey,” Mom said, when the story spilled out like the uneaten SpaghettiOs pushed across his plate. “Kids can be cruel little- They can be awful. It’ll be someone else’s turn next week, you’ll see. Head down, baby.” She tapped his forehead with a finger. “You got a lot up here. You study hard and one day you’ll show ‘em all.” She followed the tap with a kiss and Leo thought maybe he could stomach a few pasta hoops after all.

It didn’t pass. 

“Get out of my way, nard,” someone would say as they shoulder-barged him in gym class.

“What’s this even supposed to be, you dumb nard?” someone else would say as they snatched his lunch bag, holding his sandwich up by a corner as if it were full of poison. He didn’t even try to get it back. It wasn’t as if he was hungry anyway.

“Hey, nard. Heads up!” as his books were flipped out of his hands as the bell rang, leaving him to scrabble on the floor for floating loose-leaf pages as kids streamed through the hall.

Then there were the songs. “Nardie’s pop’s in jaiiil, sitting on a naiiil.” “Nardie’s poppa went to jail, ‘cos he was a dummy. Nardie watched the cop car leave, then went and cried on mommy.”

“That doesn’t even _rhyme_ ,” Leo muttered, but the non-rhyming didn’t make it hurt any less.

He did what his mom told him: put his head down and studied. If he could just learn enough, learn _everything_ , he could get a good job and support his mom and it would all work out in the end. He kept it up for the rest of the school year and the beginning of the next. And then, halfway through fourth grade, his dad got out. 

It was okay for a while. Grandpa had driven them to Iron Heights and Dad had been there waiting at the gate in his stripy shirt with the wide collar and the brown corduroy trousers that cinched too tight at the waist. He’d hugged Leo and Mom and told them that everything would be different now. Better.

It was for sure different. There were long evenings when he’d sit in his armchair drinking and staring into space. Leo would think about asking if he could switch on the TV, but there was always something stopping him, an invisible barrier like the glass that used to separate them on visit days. Sometimes it was like he’d never come home at all.

Mom seemed different too. She was doing the same things--fixing dinner, scrubbing stains, tidying up mess Leo could never see--but there was a fragile edge to her movements that hadn’t been there before. Watching her made Leo think of the time in first grade his teacher had brought in a hummingbird in a cage for a class project. It had flown the length of it over and over, never stopping for a second. Sometimes it would hover by the bars, wings beating in a blur, looking out beyond its tiny world. Leo had sat on his hands to stop himself ripping the door open and setting it free.

“Leo, bring me a beer,” his dad yelled from the depths of his chair.

Leo went to the fridge and grabbed a can from inside the door. He took it over to his dad who opened it and sipped it without looking at it. The next thing Leo knew was the open can flying past his head, streaming golden liquid that spattered his hair. He stared as his dad’s face contorted, flushing dark with anger, rising from the chair just enough to lunge forward and slap Leo hard across the cheek. 

“What you give me that shit for, boy? _Old Style_? Don’t you know the Cubs suck? Why’s that shit even in the house anyway? Who’s your momma got coming ‘round?”

“I...I...I…” stammered Leo, feet frozen solid to the floor, cold everywhere except for the sharp sting on his cheek and the burning behind his eyes. 

“Whassa matter, _Leo_? You gonna cry?” 

Leo began to shake his head, no, no, I’m not, I’m- and then his mom was there, scooping him behind her. “Don’t you touch him!” she yelled. “Don’t you even _dare_!”

“You want some too, huh, that it? You got too big for your boots while I was away, little girl. Gonna have to show you who’s boss.”

Mom gave Leo a little push, fingers fluttering like feathers. “Get to your room, Leo. Do it now.”

Leo caught at her hand and tugged it, trying to bring her with him. The tears blurred his vision so that the colors of her blouse swirled into one. 

“Baby, _go_.”

He ran and hid his head under the pillow and tried to ignore how his bed shook.

The next day Mom was wearing her hair so that it fell over her face. When she put Leo’s cereal bowl in front of him the cuff of her sweater rode up and he could see a circle of red bruises around her wrist. Every spoonful was like swallowing gravel, but Dad sat at the end of the table staring at him over his newspaper. Leo didn’t want to think about what would happen if he wasted food.

In class Leo stopped feeling as if he were looking at the world through a glass jar. He understood how it went here, what he was supposed to do. There was a problem on the board and he solved it. There was an essay to prepare and he wrote it. No one passed notes to him or talked to him and for once he was grateful. Head down, baby, study hard.

It was recess where it all fell apart, where everything distorted again, too loud, too bright, too normal. 

“Hey, nard,” said Jimmy, “Your mom should be in jail too, dressing you in those pants.”

It wasn’t the most inventive insult that had been thrown at him this past year. It sure as hell wasn’t the worst. But it was the one where everything Leo had pressed down finally bust through the lid of the box he had built for it and he punched Jimmy full in the face, not caring if the crunching sound was coming from his hand or Jimmy’s nose. 

Jimmy went down like a sacked quarterback and Leo was on top of him, pounding and yelling until he was hauled backwards in a strong grip, arms and legs still flailing uselessly against air that didn’t fight back. 

“Fuck you!” he yelled. “Fuck all of you!”

Principal Andersen sighed, taping up Leo’s fingers. “I’m not saying I don’t think Jimmy deserved a little pushback, but you can’t go punching your way out of misery. I’m still going to have to suspend you.”

Leo nodded, his jaw set to stop him making things worse. He wasn’t done yet, not by a long shot.

The Principal sighed again. “I was hoping for better things from you, Leo. You’re a bright young man. The world isn’t built for kids like you, but I know you can beat the odds if you want it enough.” She shook her head, disappointment drooping her face like a cartoon basset hound. "Not if you carry on like this.”

Leo nodded again, the churning anger mixing unpleasantly with a frustrating desire to cry. She was only trying to be kind; it only served to make him madder.

“Is someone at home?”

Another nod.

“Then go home and think about what you’ve done. I’ll expect your mom and dad for a conference at seven thirty tomorrow morning. Can they do that?”

“Mmm,” he managed.

Principal Andersen shook her head again and stood up, collecting her various pieces of medical equipment. “Off you go.”

Leo didn’t need telling twice. He opened the door to the office, brushing past the coat hung on a hat stand that stood by the door. The heavy pocket swung back into his arm. Acting on an instinct that came from nowhere, Leo dipped his hand into the pocket and lifted the slim wallet that he found there. Principal Andersen, still tidying, didn’t notice a thing. Leo shoved the wallet in his pocket and walked out. He kept his hand against the cool leather the whole way to the liquor store, the waves of anger receding each time his finger stroked over the surface. By the time he arrived a small smile edged his lips. If the world weren't built for him maybe he’d have to break it and build it again.

The homeless guy was easy enough to persuade. Buy me a six-pack and keep one for yourself. 

“You gonna wind up dead and in the papers?”

“Nah.”

“Okay then.”

Home, Leo banged open the screen door and marched straight past Mom to where Dad sat in his armchair. He threw the six-pack of Schlitz at him, breathing hard. Dad caught it and stared at Leo, unblinking, taking in the taped fingers and grazed knuckles and the rip in his pants. 

After a long moment he said, “Thank you… _Leo_. I see you learned something.”

And Leo stared back and said, “Len. My name is Len.”


End file.
